


Groping in the Dark

by SouthernContinentSkies



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dorian is oblivious, Humor, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Demands of the Qun, Pre-Slash, The U is for Unacknowledged, UST, and/or in denial, rivals/acquiantances to friends, sorry - Freeform, there is no actual groping in this fic, to ??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29259840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/pseuds/SouthernContinentSkies
Summary: Five times the Inquisition Inner Circle was wrong about the Iron Bull and Dorian, and one time they were absolutely right.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/The Iron Bull
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Groping in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/gifts).



In retrospect, the idea had probably been going around the inner circle for ages, but the first time anyone said anything to Dorian about it, it was the Inquisitor, and he was very drunk.

They were in the tavern, the night after returning from Halamshiral. Usually, Dorian didn’t go in for that sort of thing, but it was the day after a mission, and the social politics of the Winter Palace had been enough to drive them all to drink. Especially Dorian and the Inquisitor, since their respective previous exposures to aristocratic nonsense had given them all the appropriate social graces, at the cost of their patience. Inquisitor Trevelyan had apparently enjoyed the social duties of his previous life so much that merely entering a formal ballroom all but gave him hives, and he was treating the disturbance of his humors with a liberal application of alcohol.

“…and I’m jus’ so glad,” the Inquisitor was saying, very earnestly, “that you an’ the Bull have, you know, put things behind you. So to speak.”

“Ah,” said Dorian, somewhat confused.

“Or, you know, put things in…” the Inquisitor trailed off into a series of gestures that Dorian couldn’t quite interpret. “Not that I’m asking! ‘S none of my business. Just, you know, I’m glad you got all that resolved.”

“Right,” Dorian said slowly. “Sorry, Inquisitor -”

“No, no, Ivan! Thissa off-duty social thing! No titles!”

“Ivan, fine.” Dorian eyed the man’s swaying torso with trepidation. The Inquisitor wasn’t the size of, say, a certain qunari, but if he fell off the bench, Dorian wasn’t going to try to catch him. “Refresh my memory - the wine is getting to me, obviously - what have we resolved, exactly?”

“Th’tension!”

“Right…”

“The, uh, the, you know - sexy tension!”

Even in the depths of his expatriate exasperation with the Skyhold tavern’s wine selection, Dorian had never been moved to wonder whether a trip through one’s sinuses would improve the quality of the house red. Unfortunately, he now had ample evidence that it did not.

“Guh - what -” he spluttered, trying to catch his breath. “I _beg_ your pardon! What _sexual tension?_ We barely speak!”

“Yeah, but, you know.” Ivan the Inquisitor was seemingly oblivious to Dorian’s wine-related difficulties. “When you do, it’s, like, banter. Sexy banter! And, you know, staring at each other’s backsides when you walk past. I know the signs! I mooned after Lady Montresor f’r a whole season two years ago, before…” He made an expansive gesture apparently intended to encompass all of Skyhold generally, before becoming distracted by the candlelight glinting off his signet ring and trailing off.

Dorian, at a loss for words, was staring fixedly at the opposite wall.

The Inquisitor’s hand descended heavily onto his shoulder. “Dorian,” he said seriously. “The important thing is - it’s resolved.”

And he slumped over onto the table, apparently unconscious.

* * *

The next day, Dorian went to confront the Iron Bull. He found him in the training yard sharpening his axe, and resolutely refused to contemplate any humorous idiomatic possibilities.

“Good morning!” he said, with false brightness. “Have you been hearing the gossip going around here lately?”

The Iron Bull looked up at him only briefly, not stopping the grinding wheel. “Well, I hope so,” he said drily. “Seeing as that’s kinda my job, being a spy and all. But if I missed something, it seems like you’re about to tell me anyway.”

Dorian took a deep breath. “For some reason,” he said, “the Inquisitor is under the impression that the two of us are… close. Physically.”

Bull raised his eyebrows at him. Dorian was standing almost six feet back, avoiding the sparks from the grindstone.

“Maker’s breath,” Dorian said, exasperated. “Obviously I don’t mean literally. He thinks we’ve ‘resolved our sexual tension,’ though I can’t possibly imagine why!”

“Huh.” The Iron Bull stopped the wheel, but only to flip the axe over and begin again on the other side. His face was as neutral as it ever was, but Dorian could swear the qunari was laughing at him. “Well, the man does seem like he has an active fantasy life. He certainly hasn’t been getting any in person, that I’ve noticed. Too busy being awkwardly cute around Josephine.” 

“I. Ah.” Dorian’s mind wandered against his will to the unwelcome combination of Josephine and the Inquisitor’s fantasy life. He shook his head to clear it. “That’s not the point! Maker knows why that man thinks what he thinks. I just want to make sure _you_ don’t agree with him. We do not have sexual tension! Only the boring intercultural kind - and of course that provoked by your unbridled vulgarity in the field.” 

“My ‘unbridled vulgarity,’ huh? Did you want to _put_ a bridle on it, or are you enjoying it too much?” 

Dorian gaped at him in indignation. “I - you - _no!_ ”

“Hmm. Pity. Let me know if you change your mind.”

Dorian did not flounce off in a huff. He left expeditiously, in entirely reasonable irritation.

* * *

The second time someone said anything, it was Cassandra, in the field, after yet another incident of that “unbridled vulgarity.” The four of them - Cassandra, Dorian, the Inquisitor, and the Iron Bull - were hiking up and down the hills of the Hinterlands, the Iron Bull and Dorian sniping at each other in between fending off bandits and bears. For some reason, this time the Iron Bull had chosen to start in on Dorian’s allegedly impractical clothing - as though anyone wearing a circus tent on his legs had any room to talk.

“The camp is only a few hundred yards ahead, if the two of you would like some alone time.” Cassandra’s voice cut in between them, dry as dust.

“We absolutely would not,” Dorian said. “What a ridiculous idea.”

He could almost hear her roll her eyes. “Well, whatever is going on, I would appreciate it if you two were more professional, at least where I can hear you.” 

The Iron Bull’s laugh boomed off the nearby rock face. “What, like you and Varric?” 

It was Cassandra’s turn to splutter. “That is not the same! We are colleagues discussing our differences, not- not overgrown adolescents airing our personal _preoccupations_ in public!” 

Bull only grinned. “If you say so, Seeker.” 

And he trudged on ahead, leaving both Cassandra and Dorian glaring indignantly behind him.

* * *

Dorian pointedly avoided everyone for several days after that particular mission, but there were only so many places for him to be in the hold, and unfortunately his main haunts were well known. Eventually, he returned from strategically evading Madame du Fer to find Varric ensconced in his own armchair in the library nook. 

“So,” the burly dwarf said, looking up from a volume of exceptionally vulgar Nevarran love poetry that Dorian distinctly remembered returning to Lady Montilyet’s bookshelves. “The Iron Bull, huh?”

Dorian raised exactly one eyebrow.

“I mean, it’s a great story,” Varric went on. “Star-crossed lovers, dramatic moments of sexual awakening, yadda yadda…”

“Dramatic moments of _what?_ ” said Dorian, affronted. “I have not been _sexually awakened_ by anything on this mud-encrusted continent, thank you very much. You might as well suggest I explore the erotic prospects of a burlap circus tent!”

Varric raised exactly one eyebrow back at him.

“Just because he wanders around shirtless,” Dorian continued, building up steam, “except for that handful of leather straps, which do _not_ count, with his muscles rippling all over the place, flexing around with that ridiculously large axe, absolutely does not mean that there has been any awakening, of any kind! Why is everyone fixated on my sexual preferences like this? Perhaps you ought to examine your own personal fixations, and leave mine well enough alone!”

Varric’s other eyebrow had risen to join its counterpart during this outburst, and the resulting facial expression was like an avalanche of smugness, that might be set off by the smallest pebble of innuendo. Varric held it for a moment, looking like he was fighting back laughter, before carefully closing the volume of poetry and replacing it on top of the well-worn copy of _De Rerum Arcanem_ on Dorian’s end table.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Sparkler,” he said, standing up and making his way out of the alcove. 

Dorian bustled in behind him, readjusting his bookshelves with entirely gratuitous aggression.

“Of course,” Varric added over his shoulder, as he headed towards the stairs, “I’m pretty sure mind-blowing orgasms tend to help with that part. Just saying.”

And with that parting shot, he disappeared, leaving Dorian to stare distractedly into the spines of the collected works of Archmage Karidan, hoping against hope that Solas hadn’t overheard this conversation.

* * *

“Hey,” Sera said without preamble, the next evening in the tavern. “Could you put that silency thing you do on someone else’s bedcurtains, or does it have to be your own?”

“The what?” said Dorian, bringing his head out of his wineglass long enough to glare in her general direction.

“Whatever silency thing you do,” she repeated. “So you don’t have that horse guy hearing the two of you bone all the way across the courtyard, you know.”

“I absolutely do not.” Dorian debated whether to maintain his last shreds of sobriety, and dignity, or to down the rest of his wine immediately in a futile attempt to escape the dawning implications of this conversation.

”Because I figure, qunaris,” she went on, to Dorian’s absolute dismay, “they have to be pretty, you know, enthusiastic, or whatever, right? All those broad chests have to have big lungs behind them or whatever. I mean, I’m not into the men myself, but I’ve gotta admit, the Iron Bull’s pretty, you know, _phwoar_.”

“We’re not-” Dorian started, before closing his eyes and giving that argument up as a lost cause. “There is no ‘silency thing!’”

“Oh.” She pondered this for a moment. “Is it just a gag, then?”

Dorian got up and left the tavern.

* * *

His opportunities for quiet enjoyment of Skyhold growing thin, Dorian sought refuge in, of all people, Commander Cullen. The former Templar certainly wasn’t Dorian’s favorite person, but he did rank among the least likely to make insinuating comments about Dorian’s sex life, and they had struck up a friendly civility, at least, over chess. Their board in the gardens was public, but usually the intensity of their concentration rebuffed anyone’s notions of intruding with trivial matters.

They didn’t always converse during a game, but when they did, usually Dorian started it. Ominously, this time it was Cullen.

“I’m sorry some of the Templars have been rude to you,” he said, while Dorian was contemplating the disposition of one of his chanters. “I’m been meaning to say something, but now that the Chargers have intervened, it looks like I won’t have to. I just wanted you to know, it’s my preoccupation with other matters, not my lack of sympathy, that’s kept me from doing it myself. Please let me know if it’s still a problem in the future, and I’ll have a word.” 

Dorian froze, the chanter remaining suspended in his hand. “I’m sorry. The Chargers did what?” 

“They, well. You know, I believe they actually threatened the man, though as nobody’s brought me any evidence, I thankfully don’t have to take notice of it.” Cullen cleared his throat. “I assumed they’ve decided to adopt you, as it were, seeing as you and the Iron Bull are, ah…” 

Dorian slowly redirected his eyes from the chess board to Cullen’s own, pasting his most cutting Minrathous Society Smile on his face as he did so. “I’m sorry, Commander. I’m sure I misheard you. They’ve _what?_ ”

The Commander of the Breach-Closing Armies of the Inquisition visibly decided let discretion be the better part of valor. “Ah…nevermind. Just consider the Templars handled, and please let me know if you have any further problems.”

“Of course, Commander.” Dorian set his chanter down carefully, two spaces in entirely the wrong direction.

If the Commander caught on to his subsequent deliberately terrible playing, clearly designed to end the game as soon as possible in Cullen’s favor, he politely refrained from comment. 

* * *

The next unwanted team commentary incident changed everything. Unsurprisingly, this time it was Cole.

The four of them were back in the Forbidden Oasis, delivering the next round of shards to that temple that had so transfixed the Venatori. Cole had been unusually quiet while they clambered over scaffolding and through caves, killing Venatori and picking mushrooms for the better part of the morning.

As they rounded the corner of the cliff face, the sunlight glinted off of something at the top of a far pillar. Cole paused, staring dreamily out at the horizon. “Sparks in the wind - how does he not burn himself out? The sparkle must be a diamond, sharp and hard and fragile. Dozens of facets, and all of them are beautiful.”

Dorian cocked his head in confusion. Those certainly weren’t his thoughts. And if the Iron Bull was right, the Inquisitor was fixated on Lady Montilyet, and unlikely to be composing inner love poetry about anyone male. So that meant -

Bull cleared his throat. “And that’s why you leave spirits in the Fade, instead of recruiting them to a team full of actual people. No offense, Cole.” Without looking at Dorian, he shouldered carefully past Cole to follow the Inquisitor up the ladder.

Cole, having apparently completed his soliloquy, followed him, as unperturbed as ever. 

Dorian stayed behind. The inescapable conclusion was blowing his stunning mind.

“Dorian! Are you coming?” The Inquisitor’s voice came down from the top of the scaffold, breaking into his reverie.

* * *

It was extremely difficult, but Dorian held his peace long enough for them to return to Skyhold, and debrief the others. Afterwards, he found the Iron Bull in the courtyard outside the tavern, as usual. He was again busy at the grindstone, but this time it seemed more distraction than necessary maintenance. In a rush of impetuousness, Dorian decided not to mince words.

“Bull,” he said, striding up to him. “What was that, exactly? Do you _like_ me?”

The look the Iron Bull gave him was not easily readable, but Dorian thought incredulity and pity were both strong contenders.

“I don’t know if ‘like’’s the word,” he said, to all appearances preoccupied with the positioning of his axe on the wheel.

“Anything positive would be news to me,” Dorian said, watching him carefully. “I thought you were winding me up just to watch me squirm.”

The Iron Bull looked very much like he wanted to provide the punchline to that set-up, but he let it be. “I don’t entirely trust you,” he said, face returning to its serious mien. “But I don’t entirely trust Cole, either, and it’s got nothing to do with whether I like him or not. He’s dangerous. So are you.” He paused to flip the greataxe to the other side. “But the Inquisitor trusts you, and he says he has reasons - though “time travel magic” doesn’t actually help, as far as I’m concerned - and you’ve shown you’re good in a fight, and willing to lose some skin fighting back to back with the rest of us. So I trust you enough. More importantly, though -” he negotiated the axe around the first curve of its edge “- I respect you.”

Dorian blinked. “You respect me.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

The Iron Bull stopped the grindstone a moment, checked the axe’s edge, re-started it.** If Dorian didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was stalling. 

“You have your own sense of justice,” he said finally, the rumble of his voice barely rising above the rasp of the axe on the stone. “I don’t know where you got it, but you certainly didn’t get it from the vints. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good for something you must have made up yourself from scratch. That’s impressive.”

That was not at all what Dorian had been expecting. “I’m hardly the only one to criticize Tevinter,” he pointed out, slightly flustered. “Even among Tevinters themselves. Your Krem has an even more negative view of us than I do - though not without reason, certainly.”

“Yeah, well, and I respect him too,” Bull said. “But he didn’t have to go against his family to get there; it was staring him in the face. With an axe. _You_ could have kept your mouth shut and been a magister.”

Dorian’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I suppose,” he said slowly. “Though I’m so used to comparing my accomplishments unfavorably to my goals, I’ve never thought about it like that. It feels a bit like patting myself on the back for nothing, being proud of just noticing the obvious.”

“I’m Qunari,” the Iron Bull said, stopping the grindstone abruptly and resting the great-axe in his lap. “The last time _I_ thought my superiors were in the wrong, I turned myself over for re-education.”

“You’ve never thought about changing any part of the Qun? Not even a little?”

Bull shook his head. “The Qun is the Qun. The idea doesn’t even make sense.”

“It’s just that I’m not sure whether to be flattered by your admiration, when your bar for Tevinter morality is obviously so low.”

Bull shrugged. “Part of the point of the Qun is that most people outside of it don’t really know what they’re doing. Slavers are despicable, but living in the same city along with them isn’t a crime in itself. If we took Minrathous tomorrow, we’d hand most people a copy of the Qun and help them figure it out, not punish them by association.”

“Well, no,” Dorian said drily. “I suspect you’d be putting most of us in padlocked collars, actually. No, thank you.”

“Most people aren’t mages, Dorian,” the Iron Bull said, but he frowned and looked away. “Anyway, my point is, you didn’t need Koslun to realize your magisters were wrong; you got there all by yourself. And then you did something about it. And I don’t think I could have done either. So.”

It was Dorian’s turn to look away. “Well. I can definitely say that this the first time anyone’s commented favorably on my, er, moral rectitude, so thanks for that, I suppose. Even if I’m not entirely sure I agree with you.”

“You’re welcome.” The Iron Bull removed the great-axe from his lap, leaning it carefully against the wall behind him, and turned back to Dorian. The edges of his more familiar grin were creeping back onto his face. “And if you want any more sage observations from the same source, just say the word. We could talk about what you could be wearing instead of all those skirts, for instance.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “They are _robes_ , you uncultured cretin,” he said, willingly following the Iron Bull back to less fraught conversational waters. “Mages all over Thedas wear them. Just because _you_ -”

He was interrupted by, of all things, a raven, swooping down to land on the grindstone in front of Bull and cawing loudly.

“Maker’s breath!” Dorian said, recoiling. “Is that one of Leliana’s? What’s it doing down here?”

“No, it’s probably one of mine,” said Bull, reaching out to undo the small message canister strapped to its leg. “The Ben-Hassrath don’t use them at home, of course, but when in Ferelden…” He trailed off, his former humor leaving his face as his eyes scanned the message. “Huh.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t bother asking what’s in it.”

“No,” the Iron Bull said slowly. “I mean, yeah, you can, actually, this time. It’s a message for the Inquisitor. The Qun… wants an alliance. They’re sending a representative to discuss it.”

“I see,” Dorian said, watching him carefully. “Don’t get me wrong, I have my own opinions about that - though I suppose we could always use the help - but this seems like it would be a good thing for you, yes?”

The Iron Bull, still focused on the message, merely grunted in what was presumably agreement.

“Only, you don’t seem very enthusiastic about the prospect.”

“Yeah,” Bull said absently, not really in answer to Dorian. “Look, I should probably take this up to the boss. Sorry to run off, but, you know.” He was already pocketing the message tube, carefully, and standing to retrieve his axe. “See you around, Dorian.”

Dorian watched him go, his eyes narrowed. There was far too much annoying geopolitics in what ought to be an easily-sellable “save the world” endeavor. Not that he was surprised, exactly, but it was incredibly inefficient. He was surprised to realize that his biggest irritation with it at the moment was having his conversation with the Iron Bull interrupted, which was not a regret he had ever had before. On reflection, it made perfect sense that the man who literally worked as a spy - albeit not a very _secret_ agent - would have layers beneath the obvious. It put some of their previous exchanges in a rather different light. Dorian was a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t really considered that possibility before - though, in his defense, the Iron Bull did play the ignorant mercenary to the hilt whenever possible. Hopefully, despite this new development, they’d both have time to continue these conversations in the middle of it all.

In the meantime, Dorian turned and headed back to the dubious sanctuary of the library.


End file.
